Mr Malty

To be fair to Jack, he said he was going on 380 batches of experience. This is more than just going on the packaging's sez-so.

Jamil has suggested that his calculator is conservative, that he was trying to compensate for worst case scenarios, in which your yeast had been mishandled on its way to you. Now, I'm who prefers to accept the added work and cost of a starter in the pursuit of making a better batch of beer. But Jack's experience suggests there's more to consider.

 

when the experience -- however extensive -- does not include anything against which to judge the "control," then how is anyone to determine overall quality or best practices?

 

Oh, c'mon now, nobody said 0.75 million cells/ml/P is the only possible good value, did they? In my opinion, ideal pitch rate can vary based on style/strain, brewer goals, and brewhouse factors. It's why BrewCipher has a parameter to plug in one's own preference if it's something other than 0.75.

What's irrational is telling people that 0.75 million cells/ml/P is just wrong (over and over again throughout the years), without offering an alternative rate. Following the manufacturers' recommendations means not using any true rate at all.

One vial per 5 gallons of wort up to a gravity of 1.048 (or 1.060 or whatever) reduces the gravity function to a step rather than a smoothly continuous function. If you believe gravity is important to pitch rate, can you honestly believe that a step function is ideal?

So, do you believe gravity is important to pitch rate? If so, do you believe a step function like the one in the manufacturers' recommendations is ideal? Or do you simply believe that pitch rate is relatively unimportant and that a step function is "good enough?"

A direct answer to each of those questions would be good, instead of a nonresponsive "P.S." appended to your response to someone else.

 

There is an interesting science debate in here about the value of extensive experience versus controlled experimentation, but that's a digression.

What drew me into this conversation was a fascination with our differences of opinion, how we arrive at different conclusions that are based on our own experience and opinions. I suspect that Jack has learned what works for him in 380 batches. Yet my 200 or so batches make me skeptical that it would work for me. What a crazy wacky world we live in where Jack's up is my down and my right is his left. Yet, we probably would enjoy each other's beer.

If you don't like all this wishy-washy touchy-feely it's-all-good attitude I am adopting, you can blame Drew and Denny for writing the All Star book. Spoiler alert. The All-Stars do not all play by the same set of rules.

 

A guy who really knows yeast posted on another forum that you should get to know the yeast strain you are using and what makes it perform.

British Brewers usually pitch less than American, and the German Brewers pitch much more for their lagers (nobody has mentioned lagers, or have they).

A local brewpub uses a British strain, which has nice fruity character in the British beer. If they want to make a cleaner American style beer, they double the pitch rate.

 

Yeast Calc is a great tool, but it works by the user (instead of the program) changing the starter size(s) until the desired cell count is reached. IMO it requires at least a rudimentary understanding of inoculation rates to help you decide whether to make a single step or multiple step starter. One of the reasons Yeast Calc is great is that you get to see some of the details about what would normally be going on (with other calculators) behind the scenes.

If you want a free program that will automatically recommend single or multiple step starters as appropriate* (including their sizes), BrewCipher does that. There might be others that do too, but I know Mr. Malty and Yeast Calc don't. BrewCipher has the added advantage/disadvantage (depending on your point of view) in that its an integrated spreadsheet... it starts with your recipe so that you don't have to enter the same information in multiple calculators. But if you just want a standalone yeast calculator, you might not want to be bothered with entering your recipe. (OTOH, there is a simple workaround to make it act more like a standalone calculator...if you'd like to know, just ask.)

*Defining "appropriate" here as in accordance with the assumptions used, either the default ones or as modified by user parameter inputs. There are a bunch of yeast parameters you can tweak if desired.